The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
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We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
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The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one’s own ambitions.
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It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.
ALAIN DE BOTTON